Conversation Essentials

January 4, 2019

As a communication major in college I’ve always been interested in relationships!

I love friendships, romances, the complexities of communication are fascinating! In fact: Did you know that 55% of communication is body language! Then they give 38% to your tone of voice and only 7% is the actual words spoken! In some ways that is a lovely thing! You have the chance to say “I love you” and “I care for you” in so many more ways than those 2 different phrases! My husband is an expert non-verbal communicator and that’s a skillset that I would like to improve upon!

You see, I dread running out of things to say and usually resort to cheesy jokes rather than hear the crickets in a conversation!

A Story

Have you ever been in a conversation and run out of things to say? I once mentioned to my dad, a semi-professional talker and relationship builder, that I was nervous about attending my husband’s office party! Does this sound familiar? Getting all dressed up, mourning those extra 10 lbs, and fretting over what clever thing to say to make your spouses co-workers still talk to them on Monday!! That was me before that office Christmas party! My dad put it so simply when he said, “Oh Andrea, that’s easy! You just encourage people to talk about themselves.” My 25-year-old brain was astonished! So simple! So perfect! How did I not think of that?! My following thought was am I that self-focused? But, yes, of course people always have an abundance of knowledge about themselves!! Thinking about the other person is always the one thing you can have in common because they are their own personal expert! I LOVE that because I feel like a floundering failure when there is a lull in the conversation.

Resolution

One of my new-years resolutions was to love better and this year I want to be an intentionally others-focused individual. I genuinely want to get to know other people! There are so many fascinating life stories out there and I’m excited to get to hear some of them!